On August 31, a team of AMD-sponsored overclockers cranked a Bulldozer-based AMD FX processor up to an unearthly 8.429GHz, setting a new world record. This week, The Reg sat down with the leader of that processor-torturing team to find out exactly how they did it.
"This is an extreme technology sport," Simon Solotko, AMD's …

Open...and Shut
Mergers and acquisitions used to be how a company bought revenue, customers, or cool technology. In the mobile world, it's increasingly a way to buy defensive patents.
This was clear in Google's $12.5bn acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and it will unfortunately fuel many of the strategies Apple, Google, and others employ to …

Comment
Google's stroppy-teenager ethos to intellectual property has been noted here before. But the company's truculent and immature approach is having really serious consequences on its home turf. Google now poses a serious threat to the future of the most explosive new sector in IT hardware: the consumer tablet. And if Google doesn't …

While Motorola’s announcements at the Cable Show in Chicago last week shows that it has come alive and is hellbent on keeping its major cable customers, in Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the emergence of an Intel chip in an announced set top box at Comcast must set Broadcom firmly back on its heels and send the shivers up …

Deep Dive
Intel has come a long way in the server racket, and the new "Westmere-EX" Xeon E7 processor, launched in April and making its way into systems now, is arguably its most sophisticated processor for servers to date.
The Xeon E7 processors cram ten cores onto a single die, but the Xeon E7 design is a bit more than taking an eight- …

Computex
Devices that combine the power of a notebook with features of a tablet were one of the themes of last week's gadget-fest, Computex 2011 in Taiwan.
Intel is pushing its new "ultrabook" concept, and the stage is set for the mobile PC market to split into three emerging form factors: touchscreen tablets; a new wave of more …

Analysis
For all the cloudy proclamations Microsoft's boss Steve Ballmer has been making of late, the company's bread 'n' butter products remain on the desktop. And that's a fact that Intel, whose lengthy and prosperous partnership with Redmond recently took a major knock, knows only too well.
Which perhaps goes some way to explaining …

Analysis
There are two reasons why Intel is switching to a new process architecture: it can, and it must.
The most striking aspect of Intel's announcement of its new Tri-Gate process isn't the architecture itself, nor is it the eye-popping promises of pumped-up performance and dialed-down power. And it certainly isn't the Chipzillian …

The dearth of details from Sony about a criminal intrusion into its PlayStation Network is fomenting plenty of speculation about the methods and motives behind the attackers, and some of it isn't pretty.
The most dire scenario is that attackers gained, or tried to gain, control of the part of Sony's network that issues updates …

Photos
The Osborne 1 – the first mass-market portable computer – turns 30 years old this month. And what better way to celebrate than by tearing one apart?
One problem: I couldn't get my hands on an original Osborne 1. But I was able to tear into the next best thing: the slightly remodeled follow-on to the original, also known as the …

Comment
I couldn't tell who was more excited about our new electronic toy: me or my wife.
She snuck out of bed at 3 am local time on March 11 to order me an iPad 2, and considering how much my wife likes sleep, that probably means she still likes me, even after sixteen years of dating and marriage. At least enough to shell out $729 for …

Open...and Shut
Hewlett-Packard needs to grow, but its chief executive Leo Apotheker has made it very clear that he intends to boost HP's fortunes in a very non-Oracle sort of way.
That is, rather than buying the past - snapping up legacy software companies and essentially buying their customer relationships and maintenance revenue streams - he …

Leader
Intel's Android efforts: products, please, not prototypes
Is it really news that Intel is encouraging Asian netbook and tablet makers to use its processors in their Android products, as Taiwan's DigiTimes and the many sites citing it believe?
We'd think it news if the chip giant wasn't making such a move.
Intel is in the …

Comment
Phase-change memory (PCM or Phase-change RAM - PRAM) seems to be changing its phase, from promising-newcomer-technology to fading-candidate-going-nowhere.
PCM is a memory technology involving a change of material state and electrical resistance in a memory cell's chalcogenide layer. The theoretical attractions are that it is non …

Analysis
When introducing the iPad 2 on Wednesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred to it as an "all-new design." That assertion could kindly be called debatable.
More accurately, the iPad 2 is a refinement and speed bump to the original iPad. Its new higher-performance processor and improved graphics are, to be sure, welcome upgrades. Its …

Comment
Nvidia's move to go public on its four-core processor plans come, some readers will recall, just a month or so after it was claimed Apple's second-generation iPad will sport just such a chip, and weeks after it was suggested the iPad 3 will be out as early as the autumn.
Nonsense, said some. Apple wouldn't release iPad 2 this …

It would be both right and wrong to describe the new BlackBerry Operating System as just eye-candy on the existing java based system.
Correct in that what it does is make the OS look very much better. Incorrect in that in making it look better it also works better and is easier to use.
The most significant change is the …

Comment
If Symbian is Nokia's "burning platform", has the Finnish phone giant thrown itself into the frying pan to escape the fire?
There's undoubtedly something desperate in the move. Nokia is spending way too much money promoting a platform, Symbian, that is commanding less and less market share. Where once it led, now Nokia has been …

Opinion
Which were the greatest DEC computers and why? Which were the worst - and why?
Everyone has their own definition of greatest and worst, and exemplars of each, but I'm looking at the machines that had the most or the least influence. Since DEC under Olsen got a lot of things right, it's quicker and easier starting from the bottom …

Comment
In February 2009, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said what we were all thinking: that if Apple is a part of the consumer electronics market, why doesn’t it produce a TV with Apple TV (and a DVR) incorporated?
The first time Faultline predicted this was a full two years earlier, but we’re not followed quite as assiduously as …

When the world's largest computer maker announced that it plans to equip laptops and desktops with its own operating system, you can be sure that the squeals emanating from Redmond's corner offices were not squeals of delight. And we're guessing the denizens of Cupertino's executive suites pricked up their ears as well.
On …

“The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short,” says Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his notorious Thoughts on Flash. “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too).”
Adding to the confusion, every non-Apple …

RISC chip designer ARM Holding has closed out a record Q4 and 2010, and is laying the foundations to expand into desktop PCs and servers through the aggressive and enlightened self-interest of its growing licensee base.
In the fourth quarter ended in December, ARM (the company) had £113.9m in total revenues, up 34 per cent. …

Mobile phones are emotive devices. They have your kids as the wallpaper, texts saying who loves you and both your work and personal lives in one.
Even if it’s a company device there is an emotional bond between the user and the device that is unlike any other. Very few people feel precious about their laptop. Mobile phones are …

Analysis
Things seemed poised to turn around for AMD in 2011. But the abrupt departure of CEO Dirk Meyer on Monday afternoon – at the exact same time that rivals Intel and Nvidia ceased their hostilities and a week after Nvidia jumped into the processor racket – indicates that AMD's board of directors sees challenges that aren't obvious …

Analysis
Bill Gates may have long departed, but he's still in charge at Microsoft, in spirit at least. Every year Chairman Bill would return from a "reading week" – I prefer to think that Bill got lost on his annual trip to the shopping mall – having noticed that there were lots of newfangled TVs / watches / phones / pacemakers about, …

CES 2011
OK, so Sony's networking chief Kaz Hirai didn't announce the PlayStation Phone - or even confirm that this eagerly anticipated gadget is on the way, but he came darn close during his Consumer Electronics Show (CES) presentation this evening in Las Vegas.
He did confirm - twice, in case assembled hacks and analysts missed it …

We are grateful to Which? for working out that video games lose value faster than cars.
The organisation bought a copy of COD: Black Ops from a retail outlet for £44.99 - and then tried to sell it three days after its release to seven high street retailers. The buyback offers ranged from £16.70 to £33, with the worst …

Comment
Intel has implemented its X18-M and X25-V flash products in a tablet and netbook form factor with the m-SATA SSD 310 line.
The 40GB 310 has exactly the same I/O performance as Intel's 40GB X25-V with 25,000 random read IOPS, 2,500 random-write IOPS, and 170MB/s sequential-read and 35MB/s sequential-write speeds.
Its 80GB …

Intel sees tablets as a strong route for its Atom processor, into the mobile device market, because of the need for high performance and the similarities to PC functionality.
However, the first commercial tablets, such as iPad and Galaxy Tab, have run on ARM-based chips, and indeed, both of these processors come from Intel‘s …

Opinion
Tablet media applications have a Google invisibility cloak around their stories. As this spreads a deadly revenue-denying dart could penetrate Google's media business model.
eyeofSauron 'There is no hope in the void'
The worldwide web is wide open, and Google takes full advantage of that, indexing everything it can find and …

A bank, a network operator and a transport company will be deploying a payment infrastructure based on Near Field Communications (NFC) technology in mobile phones, but without inviting handset manufacturers to the party.
StarHub will be running the invitation-only trial of NFC payments in Singapore with DBS Bank, featuring …

Boffins at IBM have come up with a better way to embed laser communications onto processor and memory chips using plain vanilla CMOS manufacturing processes, paving the way for three-dimensional chips integrating hundreds of processors, their main memory, and on-chip optical networks that will, it is hoped, allow for the …

Electronic ink is going colour - but you should probably wait a bit for your rainbow-friendly e-reader.
A year ago we looked at e-ink technologies, and suggested it would be 2011 before we saw colour e-ink devices on the shelves. On this occasion it seems we got it about right; though if you can wait until the latter part of the …

This Old Box
One of Apple's oddest machines just turned 21, meaning that here in California we can now legally buy it a pint and raise a toast — if not to its success, at least to its good intentions.
Apple Macintosh Portable
The year was 1989, when Apple still had "Computer" in its name (click to enlarge)
No, we're not talking about …

I am the father of four daughters, aged 23-10, and have learnt a thing or two over the years about Barbie dolls. The most salient thing is the "generational split" within my family - the two older girls owned Barbies and played with Barbies - the two younger junked the hand-me downs and never played with dolls. Of any kind. Ever …

Apple's new MacBook Air is as cheap as the MacBook at £849, signalling the end of premium pricing for Apple's slim hinged flash slab.
When it was introduced two years ago the MacBook Air was priced pretty high but it had a great spec. It still does but the smaller 11-inch screen model is now priced like the entry level MacBook. …

Comment
So who exactly forecast Apple's fourth quarter - equivalent to calendar Q3 - iPad sales would be so much higher than the 4.19m the company last night announced that it had shipped during the period?
Someone must have done, to prompt all the stories appearing across the internet suggesting that Apple's iPad sales were "lower than …

Frankfurt Book Fair
If some of the speakers at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair are to be believed, your life — or at least the part of it that involves snuggling up in bed with a good book and mug of hot cocoa — is about to be turned upside down.
Sure, we've heard plenty on books going electronic, but the coverage mostly focuses on the devices — …

Analysis
You have to take care with statistics, and that is certainly the case with the report from US computer warranty house SquareTrade headlined "iPhone 4 glass breaking 82 per cent more than iPhone 3GS four months in".
Says the company: "SquareTrade analysed iPhone accidents for over 20,000 iPhone 4s covered by SquareTrade Care …